In place of the in-person event, NAMM announced "Believe in Music," a weeklong virtual gathering aimed "to unify and support the people who bring music to the world," according to a statement. "Believe in Music" will be held starting Jan. 18 and will provide a mix of professional education programming on BelieveinMusic.tv, entertainment and interactive marketplace for buyers and sellers.
Yamaha said they are excited to participate in this years virtual show...

I don't believe there will be any flagship in arranger department / only for begginer and maybe some other average. ther is not enough market for us

Yamaha released new DGX-670; which is closer to PSR-S series, yet, still limited. You can now mute style’s parts, but it looks like you still can’t revoice them. Also, you have 4 sections for each style, but only one intro and one ending. I think that Yamaha is being protective about Genos and PSR-S series, but still wants to give the DGX at least some advantage over previous models and competitors.

Kurzweil has announced a K2700, thereby taking up the legendary line of top workstations again.
https://www.amazona.de/namm-2021-kurzweil-k2700-multiengine-workstation/
However, it seems Kurzweil aren't inclined to live up to their former reputation in terms of orchestral sounds any more, nothing to be found about really new orchestral samples, it's mostly about pianos and e-pianos.

In fairness to Kurzweil, most contemporary composers are using huge orchestral libraries for the majority of work that would have been the job for a K2500 back in the day.

But the control possibilities as a master controller are still head and shoulders above the rest. Basically, just about anything on a Kurzweil can send any MIDI code you want. I remember setting up the big ribbon to have four zones you could tap in anywhere, and it could change setups! Very handy if you need to make rapid changes but both hands were so busy it was tough to hit a tiny button quickly...

That kind of flexibility isn’t really on even the best master controllers around today. While its 48 voice polyphony and 128MB RAM really pegs my old K2500S as a child of the 90’s, it still trounces the latest controllers as a control hub for my studio.

This new Kurzweil looks to be one hell of a keyboard..!

I still hope Kurzweil will update their orchestral sounds, which are still quite amazing in view of the ridiculous data sizes of the samples (PC3 still worked with sizes like 16 or 32 MB for an entire symphonic sound collection). I am happy they are continuing this ledendary line. I also heard Kurzweil are now using larger versions of their old orchestral samples, which would be a big progress. Like Roland, they recorded relatively large samples in the early 1990s, which they downsized for their hardware instruments / expansion boards, but still have the large versions stored so they can now be implemented in synths with the larger storage capabilities. In case of Roland, this hasn't been done, most probably because the license of these original samples is owned by Eric Persing.
Unfortunately, many stores, even Musicstore Cologne, one of the largest stores in Europe, have thrown Kurzweil entirely out of their product range.

For well under $1000 you can get a computer based orchestral library that even the latest Kurzweil could not host because of the massive size of it. To be honest, libraries half that cost still offer far more data and control possibilities...

I think the the effort of squeezing the data to fit a hardware sampler with minuscule RAM simply isn’t cost effective any more. It truly takes forever to do. Back in the day, that effort paid off as computer libraries either didn’t exist, or were $10k luxuries for the Hans Zimmer's of the world. I have the Orchestral board in my K2500, and yes, it’s quite good for its day. But in fairness, a $100 Garritan computer orchestral library smokes it, let alone something like the Spitfire BBCSO library!

When modern orchestral libraries get delivered on TB sized SSD’s, you have to face the fact that hardware has had its day!

Me, I’m kind of leaning towards getting an ARM powered Mac Mini and a big SSD, and just using it as a honking big sound module for my studio. Massive polyphony, massive sample sizes, no muss, no fuss!

Hi Diki

Do not get an M1 (Arm) Mac yet as most 3rd party VSTs (Including from the big boys) do not support it (With most manufactures saying it will 1 to 2 years before they are fully adapted) also we are still on 1st generation Arm Macs so best to wait until things settle (Apple estimates 2 years to complete) as more advanced versions are expected this year. (Don’t rely on Rosette 2 to make them work as while good it still want get a lot of them to run)
For possibly the first time Apple has gone with something new without charging OTT for it, so it is looking good for the future. (You will always pay a premium for the Apple badge though)
If you are happy to just use Logic (Many other DAWs will also not run on Arm Macs yet) or even the free Garage Band then great, as it works like a charm but still doesn’t solve the 3rd party VST problem.

Bill

for the hammonds loveres there is a new sk prp hammond includibg pianos mono synth strings and many more . as much as i can say from the videos is that the hammond sound sound very good , but all the otheres are not good enough .